The SDF fighters have opened a major new front in Syria’s war, launching an offensive to drive Islamic State out of a swathe of northern Syria it uses as a logistics base, and were reported on Wednesday to be making swift progress.
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US commandos are accompanying the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as they push north toward Manbij, backed by intense USA airstrikes, as part of an offensive aimed at recapturing the town in Aleppo province, said Col. Chris Garver, a USA military spokesman.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday (June 2) a US-backed offensive against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was largely being carried out by Arab rather than Kurdish fighters, in a sign of tacit approval for the operation near Turkey’s borders.
“It’s significant in that it’s their last remaining funnel” to Europe, a USA military official said.
Backed by American warplanes, fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit and the SDF say the recapture of Manbij will effectively choke off the Islamic State’s main lifeline into Raqqa, isolating the city in preparation for a final push to retake it.
The operation will also count on support from USA -led coalition air strikes as well as from ground-based firing positions across the border in Turkey.
As Daesh militants press Syrian opposition groups north of Azaz, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of anti-Daesh rebel groups dominated by the outlawed PKK’s extension in Syria, the YPG – has taken on the Manbij pocket, a 98-kilometer (60-mile) long area controlled by Daesh. “YPG has a very limited role in support of the operations”.
US-backed coalition aims to cut off town seen as key ISIL supply route from Turkey as air strikes soften up fighters.
And they will leave after the battle and cede control to their Arab partners, the official said.
The operation comes ahead of an eventual push by the US -backed Syrian forces toward the city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s defacto capital in Syria and the prime objective in Syria for USA military planners.
Falluja, where USA forces fought the biggest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq, has always been a bastion for Sunni Muslim insurgents and was the first Iraqi city where Islamic State raised its flag in 2014 before storming through the north and west of the country.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States also supported moving forward on plans for the airdrops.
The Manbij operation comes as part of a broader effort to squeeze the Islamic State in Raqqa.
This force is overwhelmingly the Kurdish YPG, though the United States insists that the specific troops attacking Manbij have an unusually high number of Arabs, an attempt to placate Turkey, who has warned against Kurdish expansion across the Euphrates.
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U.S. military advisers coordinate special forces movements away from the front line, and this crucial operation planned to be completed in several weeks. In a reminder of the risks, one US service member was injured north of Raqqa over the weekend, the Pentagon said. “They need food especially in that we are entering the month of Ramadan and people are trying to secure any kind of food to allow them to prolong their survival”, Mr. Matar said.
